62 NOTICES OF BOOKS, 



It remains to add a few words, and these wholly in praise of the de- 

 tails of execution of the descriptive matter; the generic and specific dia- 

 gnoses are as short as is consistent with the plan of the work, and the 

 habitats are carefully and correctly selected and arranged, — a very im- 

 portant point, too often slovenly performed in systematic works. We 

 could have wished that the uniformity of the typography of previous 

 volumes of the work had been so far broken into as to have allowed of 

 the habitats, at any rate, being printed in Italics : this, and the same 

 or a different type for the names of the principal organs introduced in 

 the generic characters and descriptions (as Calyx, Corolla, etc.), would 

 save much time and no little fatigue of eyesight to the reader ; these 

 may appear trifles, but in reality they are matters of great importance, 

 now that the number of species is so vast, and the time and difficulty 

 of indentifying them by descriptions so greatly increased. 



Bonplandia : A Botanical Journal. The official Organ of the Impe- 

 rial Leop. Carol. Academy. Edited by Wilhelm E. G. Seemann 



and Berthold Seemann. Hanover, Kiimpler; London, Williams 

 and Norgate; Paris, Klincksieck. (Semi-monthly, with Illustra- 

 tions.) 



The plan of this Journal has undergone considerable change since 

 noticed by us in our volume of 1852. The 'Bonplandia* was then 

 mainly devoted to Economic Botany, but after the first six months of 

 its issue, this exclusive tendency was given up, and articles on all 

 branches of botany were freely admitted. The effect of that change 

 was an immediate increase, which has ever since been going on to such 

 an extent, that instead of the one sheet promised in the prospectus, 

 we have now not unfrequently three, four, and even six, and instead of 

 the few original contributors, of no less than sixty, amongst them such 

 names as those of Humboldt, Bonpland, Reichenbaeh fil., Miquel, 

 Hasskarl, Goppert, Grisebach, Klotzsch, Schultz Bip., Steetz, W. Hof- 

 meister, Caspary, Liebmann, Nees von Esenbeck, Oersted, Lehmann, 

 and others. 



Of the Physiological papers particularly deserving of mention, are : 

 W. Hofmeister, "On the Germination of Botrychium Lunaria" Ejusd. 

 " On the Emoryogenesis of Phanerogams (embracing the latest views of 

 the author, and a critical examination of the writings of ltadlkofer aud 

 Tulasne on that subject)." Ejusd. "A new Theory on the Impregna- 



